China names Islamic group as 'supporter' of Tiananmen attack

The blaze sent clouds of smoke billowing into the air near a giant portrait of Mao Zedong in Tiananmen Square.

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China's top security official has named an Islamic movement as "behind-the-scenes supporters" of Monday's fatal attack in Tiananmen Square.

"Its behind-the-scenes supporters were the terrorist group the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) based in Central and West Asia," the secretary of Central Politics and Law Commission, Meng Jianzhu, said in Beijing's first claim of an organised link to the incident.

A vehicle ploughed through bystanders in Beijing's Forbidden City and burst into flames on Monday, killing three occupants and two bystanders.

Beijing police have since arrested five people it says are radical Islamist separatists.

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying has called ETIM "the most immediate and realistic security threat in China."

She said the Islamic separatist group and other organisations "have long been engaged in central, east and west Asia, and have colluded with other international terrorist organisations."

Mr Meng has called China a victim of the rising global terrorism threat, which it would further resolve to combat, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Michael Clarke, a professor at Griffith University in Sydney, says ETIM may have ties in Pakistan and central Asian countries, but it is unclear how close they might be.

"It's not that China shouldn't be concerned about those (ties), but the core issue is that the linkages have been exaggerated by the Chinese government," Mr Clarke said.

Beijing has blamed Uighur groups for what it calls "terrorist" attacks in Xinjiang, but details of alleged incidents are hard to confirm, and exile groups accuse China of exaggerating the threat to justify religious and cultural restrictions.

Alim Seytoff, a spokesman for the overseas-based World Uyghur Congress, said Uighurs face close security scrutiny in Xinjiang and he does not believe an organised resistance movement exists there.

Xinjiang is a sparsely populated but strategically important area which borders several central Asian countries.

It is periodically hit by violent clashes, including riots in the region's capital Urumqi in 2009 which left around 200 dead, but information is often hard to obtain.

Police have arrested at least 139 people in Xinjiang in recent months for allegedly spreading jihad, according to state-run media.